Digital Griots--Second Half

In the second half of our reading of Digital Griots, Adam J. Banks takes us through a definition of remix—as he sees it—which states as “the global activity of the creative and efficient exchange of information based upon technologies that is supported by the practices of cut/copy/paste” (Navas qtd by Banks 90). In this chapter, he also discusses the rhetorical tradition of “back in the day,” which he uses to illustrate how old school and new school can intermix to create richer rhetorical traditions and furthermore join up to create a strong linkage between different generations of blackfolk. He also discusses how the “back in the day” narrative is used to critique cultures of the past and present, but how these narratives can also join ourselves to one another.

The second chapter, mixtape, was the most interesting for me because of how he tackles the way we teach composition. We teach it in one of three ways: 1. uphold the status quo 2. declare political and ethical neutrality and 3. base one’s work in changing the current system (112). I have to admit that I do a lot of #2 in class though I would really love to embrace #3 more and I think I do in some units more than others. But mainly, I feel #2 because of the student population at NDSU where many students are from middle class backgrounds and are rather conservative as well. And this is particularly stronger in teaching UDW courses because let’s face it: the working poor are the students I understand best and they don’t often stay in college, though I think more and more have been staying because of opportunities afforded to them. (I might be being hopeful, however.)

Mainly, I think I do understand Banks concerns for the most part, despite the fact I am not well versed in African American Rhetoric. (Is there a poor white trash rhetoric? Probably. And I think the place of unions in working poor culture might be an interesting avenue to look into). I for one do wish more students from the working poor backgrounds/people from poverty stayed in college. Most of people from backgrounds like mine do not stay because we feel out of place, feel we can’t do it, or have other reasons for leaving. (Often, we get caught up in family situations and economic situations that we can’t control and lose hope. It is easy to do.) So I think what Banks is trying to do is find avenues to give the blackfolk organic intellectual (as originated by Antonio Gramsci) a place and continue and strengthen the black theology and other ideas in the African American community that already exist through digital discourses and other means.

Questions:

·      How could Banks ideas work to change the way we teach composition and our present ideas of plagiarism? 

Remix, part two

In Part Two of Remix by Lessig, he discusses the hybrid economy and the positive effects such an economy could have on the internet in terms of copyright and remixing. He discusses three types: community spaces, with the most familiar probably being Craigslist; collaboration spaces, with Yahoo! Answers as an example; and finally communities, such as the Creative commons, which Lessig assisted in creating and popularizing.

One thing that Lessig discussed in this chapter, which I found interesting, was “sharecropping.” This refers to corporations forcing the remixer to give up all rights to his or her creativity since that person has only remixed the work and supposedly not created anything new. I think such an idea is detrimental to culture and harmful to creativity. If we encourage thinking such as this, we are still allowing the “experts” in RO culture to control cultural production by placing their stamps on anything that is created, even remixes.

Legitimizing the remix is an important step for us to take as a society and culture. First of all, we all do it on some level. I allow students to create remixes in class for final projects, if they are interested. When I taught 120 here and 101 at Mankato, I had many students create remixes for their final projects. Many of these were creative and I don’t see why those students should not have any rights to the work they accomplished.

In our society where the internet and its spaces are truly king, we must recognize the changing face of creativity. I also think remixes have been around for generations, as I think literature has had its share of remixed material. Collaboration itself has made up a large part of literary culture, though literary culture does not always like to admit to having a high level of collaboration. (Think of the writer’s workshop, for example, and how groups of writers have often worked together, just as how any other creative group networks and shares ideas.)

Questions:

·      Lessig at one point says one of the goals of his book is to inspire for more creativity (130). In what ways is he doing this besides through the obvious way of seeing remix as a form of creativity? 

Interpreter and Repurposer ---Jaszi

Peter Jaszi in “Is There Such a Thing as Postmodern Copyright?” looks back at a 1992 essay he wrote where he discussed the Rogers Vs. Koons court case to look at how copyright views have changed, again using a Koons case as one of his examples. In his 1992 article, Jaszi articulated the reason Koons lost his case was because he wasn’t seen as an author, but looking back Jaszi feels that this isn’t the case as much as views on copyright have changed.  For instance, in the second case (Koons v. Blanche) Koons now uses the defense that the way he uses images are “transformative” in nature. Koons paints himself as an “interpreter and repurposer of existing content” (419). Jazsi articulates how it was through these arguments that Koons won his second case. And though it may be easy to argue this happened because of a postmodern view of copyright, Jazsi feels that copyright isn’t old enough to be labeled postmodern and furthermore our culture has changed in how it views the “romantic author.”

My first experience with the notion of copyright occurred because of the Livejournal blogging community. When Livejournal first started, it was a site that many writers and visual artists used to post their work (late 90s, early 2000s). I remember one instance where a LJ “friend” wrote about how we all needed to make our posts private as she had found out a high school student had “stolen” a few photos she had taken and “repurposed” them for a class project (she obviously did not use the word repurposed.) I remember her also discussing how we all should copyright our works to make sure our art was protected. (As a high school student, I felt this was incredibly unrealistic for me, much less not particularly worth it. Now I realize that Livejournal itself may have had some fine print about postings made to their site, just like how Facebook today does.)

At first, I was with the angry poster. How awful to steal something from someone and not give credit. But when I thought about it more, I felt a bit differently. For one, I like art in part because art can be shared and repurposed, like Any Warhol did and like Girl Talk does now. (I think most people know where things come from and if they don’t they will eventually find out. Plus, that “original” art was probably repurposed from somebody else. At the same time, I also find it hard to leave the romantic author notion where credit should be given where it is due.) Secondly, I kind of commended the high school student for going to LJ to find a piece of work he or she could use since I felt there were some talented individuals there. It certainly was a smarter thing to do considering the situation. I also wondered how this artist had found out about her work being “stolen” as she never explained it to us. She just wrote a rant about ownership and art and accused some nameless high school student of “stealing from her.” (I admit that I felt bad for that student. I certainly wouldn't have felt so great after reading that if I were the student who had "stolen" the photos from her.) 

I think that it is a positive thing that we are having discussions about copyright and authorship, especially considering the internet. I remember liking the internet immediately because of the sharing aspect of it and the fact I could talk to people without having to go outside and talk with them. (I was very shy.) At the same time, it is hard for me, as a writer, to leave that author construct behind because even though I know I repurpose and transform my work from other models, I am also the one who sits down to write. 

Questions:

1.                    When did you first learn about copyright and what did it mean to you at the time? Basically, how did you understand it?

2.                    Do you think there are other reasons why Koons won the second case that Jaszi discusses?

Romantic and collaborative authorship--Rhetoric in a New Key

Though I am typically not a collaborative writer in the way one typically views collaboration (two or more people working on a singular document), I do collaborate on an indirect level (using sources to “enter a conversation” and bringing bits of conversation or people I know into a piece of prose, just to name a couple examples), so Lunsford and Ede’s essay “Rhetoric in a New Key: Women and Collaboration” struck me with the unfair practices of punishing collaboration.

As a creative writer, no one tells a story alone. Writers write what they know and often use instances gained from other writers through workshops or in social situations. Writers often use real life situations or people to help flesh out characters and situations in a story, whether that story is fiction or nonfiction. In this sense, I see a model of collaboration, though less direct than the commonly identified model of collaboration that stands up in opposition against the “romantic writer.”

In this essay, we again encounter the dialogic (loosely structured) and hierarchical (firmly structured) models of collaboration. We are also told that when surveyed (and this time women in the MLA were surveyed), most responded that much of their writing was done alone and most collaborative writing involved grants (277). In their research, Lunsford and Ede uncovered those collaborative practices in writing lacked a connection to theoretical or pedagogical issues (277). To combat this idea, the authors gave a number of examples of collaborative writing and how these instances were punished for being collaborative. The essay also discusses how the dialogic model of collaboration is often enacted in subtle ways, which may explain the tendency to view writing as originating from a singular authorship.

I have to admit, however, that as a creative writer and a person who prefers to work alone, leaving the romantic writer image is difficult. At times I try to explain to myself that this model has been taken to the extreme in some instances since I firmly believe those 19^th century writers, and everyone before and after, have collaborated on some level. I look at how the creative writing workshop tends to predominantly function where collaboration occurs as writers exchange ideas in attempts to make a piece of writing better. With these examples, I almost want to argue that the “romantic writer” has always been a myth, albeit a potentially productive one, as it has helped to articulate the idea of a creative genius and helped creativity become valued in industrialized societies that tend to value production over people. And I do believe in the potential of human creativity and originality, even in a society that may prefer to scoff at such an idealistic notion where “every idea has been taken”. So I do think there are some benefits to having the notion of singular artists and authorship, even if it is not completely realistic.

Questions:

·      Do you feel the focus on just women in this essay creates an overly “feminized” approach to writing where collaboration would more quickly be understood and valued? And do you think this feminized view of collaboration is reductive in some way? (I’m thinking of Geoff Sirc’s recent article in CCC that was briefly discussed in class where he responded to peer review in what we would term an aggressive and masculine way. I’m also thinking about how composition is often feminized and if/how this is reductive. But I also may not be explaining myself very well.)

·      Can you think of an instance where collaborative writing was either punished or perhaps valued less when compared to another piece that was written with sole authorship?

Ede's "Writing as a Social Process"

Lisa Ede in “Writing as a Social Process” opens with the idea that theory and practice must be joined for one’s professional life to come together gracefully and with a sense of grounding. To exemplify this, she writes of her struggles balancing her scholarship with her role as the director of her university’s writing center. Later in the essay, she asserts that this problem of theory and practice is a common one for writing center directors. These individuals are so busy with the writing center director role that it is hard to find time to take theorize on their work. As a result, Ede gives some areas for research that writing center directors can begin to work on theorize about, such as the role of collaborative writing within the writing center.  In this sense, Ede’s essay becomes a call to action for writing center directors who know that their scholarship must match their practice.

Though this may be a stretch, reading Ede’s essay was interesting for me since I come from multiple academic backgrounds, though all have been related to English (creative writing, literature, composition/writing studies). The problem is that though all these areas fall within English studies, the ideologies do not always correspond. Since I have background in literature and creative writing, I have been working on finding ways to bring these fields together with what I am learning in my studies on rhetoric and writing so that I can incorporate previous knowledge into my dissertation. For example, (and I’m taking this whole discussion from my own limited understanding) within postmodern rhetoric the concept of “authorial voice” does not exist. I assume postmodern rhetoricians believe this because of the idea of multiplicities and the idea that nothing is stable, and voice, once established, creates a sense of stability and unity for a grouping of text by an individual author. But once one places the idea that voice does not exist within creative writing pedagogy, that pedagogy falls apart because so much instruction hinges upon the creation and finding of one’s voice. I also feel that such an argument has the potential to devalue literature since voice is also a common construct to discuss literary works. We can use common tropes and experiences of the author to link all their works, but it is important to note that the construction of authorial voice plays a role as well.

             So one of my challenges as a graduate student here has been to find ways to make previous knowledge applicable to what I am doing now and to work to find intersections amongst all the differing ideologies. In many ways, I think this is also what Ede and Lunsford are attempting to do throughout their book.

Questions:

1.                    For those who have worked in writing centers: what are some other ways of bringing theory and practice together?

2.                    Do you think there is another way the academic system could help out writing center directors with the problem of making scholarship and practice intersect and even making more space for it?

3.                    Can you think of other areas where a similar problem happens between making theory applicable to practice? (haha, graduate students? ;) ) 

Brandt and Ghostwriting

In Deborah Brandt’s article “Who’s the President?: Ghostwriting and the Shifting Values in Literacy,” Brandt examines the role of ghostwriters and the more public personas they work for in popular culture. In her article, it appears that the ghostwriter is “dead,” much of as how Barthes imagines the author to be dead, even though the ghostwriter is doing the brunt of the work. Brandt writes of how in our culture literacy is highly valued, so much so that when it is “discovered” that a president had a ghostwriter write a campaign book the response was, “who is the president?” (549). In this example, one sees how writing is valued as both giving status and a status marker. In other words, one can “make a name” through writing (550). But the question arises of how ghostwriters and the implications of ghostwriters are “[transforming] the meanings, values and practices of literacy, not to mention the institutions and organizations that are harnessing them” (551).

In the section titled Situating the Study, Brandt looks at how ghostwriting has been a focus of study for literary and communication scholars, just to name a few. Brandt mentions how communication scholars have studied the way an author’s background influences a text, but how those studies are muddied when ghostwriters are brought into the conversation (551). Brandt also mentions workplace writing in this section, which in itself is a highly collaborative model where many voices are involved in the construction of a text.

In the section, writing can be sold and authorship can be bought, Brandt shows the value of ghostwriting. Here Brandt brings up the idea of plagiarism and how ghostwriting can be viewed as different from plagiarism. Ghostwriting is viewed as “work made for hire” and therefore is an acceptable substitute for the public personality actually writing and at the same time is also a financially lucrative model in the world of writing. But Brandt also shows the difficulty regarding ghostwriting since the public in many cases must assume that the public personality named in association with the work is responsible, or the ‘author’, of the communication. Brandt also examines the views of ghostwriters through interviews in how they recognize their employers as “controlling agents” of their work, often even talking with their employers to try to establish the kind of information they would share or the voice they would have if they were to write the text themselves (554). When I read this part, I couldn’t help but think about my youthful obsession with the work of V.C. Andrews and how when I realized that much of her work was ghostwritten, I could barely distinguish the difference between Andrews’ actual work and the voices of her ghostwriters. Brandt also mentions how ghostwriters have a sort of “persona control” when they work for their clients (557).

In the penultimate section, Literacy and scarcity Brandt acknowledges the idea of “ghostwriter as researcher” and therefore, in some ways, the source of the knowledge (559). Brandt also acknowledges the correlation between writing and time, where when someone “takes time to write” it shows attentiveness, care, and involvement with the audience (560). This in turn will cause the reader to think of the writer as he or she reads through the text (560). In the final part of the essay, Brandt acknowledges the power of writing where writing can “boost someone’s reputation or claim to entitlement” since he or she has shown proper knowledge and engagement with selected material as well as the audience involved (561).

Finally, in Ghostwriting and the social order: cases of controversy, Brandt looks at critics of ghostwriting where critics see ghostwriting as deceptive since the “author” is not doing the actual writing. This, critics feel, exploits people and the trust they have put into the represented personas or organizations. In looking at this problem, Brandt examines legal and medical consequences, such as how pharmaceutical companies will hire ghostwriters in their efforts to promote new medicines (565).

As I read this article, I kept thinking about two things: 1. the similarities between Brandt’s discussion of the placement of ghostwriters and Barthes “Death of the Author” and 2. celebrity culture where many celebrities have “written” books with the aid of ghostwriters whose names are barely, if at all, mentioned. In Brandt’s view, it seems as if to the majority of the reading public, the ghostwriter is indeed “dead” or not important. I recently read a book by a “celebrity” (Zak Bagans of the TV show Ghost Adventures whose book Dark World is mainly about how he became interested in the paranormal) who had a ghostwriter and while the ghostwriter’s name was visible on the book (though in much smaller font size, of course), discussions about the book were all directed to the celebrity with the ghostwriter never mentioned, which bothered me as someone who writes, both academically and creatively. Finally, Brandt’s essay serves well juxtaposed with Venuti’s essay on copyright and translation since translators do not have the same status as authors in copyright law.

Questions:

1.                    On page 567, Brandt assumes the following: “the internet seems to be a favoring a less original form of writing: creation by citation, sampling, cutting and pasting, and blurring the roles of writers and readers.” Do you agree this is “less original” or do you think that this is just a new way of writing and sharing of knowledge?

2.                    On page 557, ghostwriters admitted to manipulating the writing to make their “author” appear “smarter.” Discuss the ethical implications of this.

3.                    What are some complications you see to the “ghostwriter as researcher” persona? Brandt discussed, for example, how the ghostwriter does much of the primary research and dissemination of the research and therefore the person the writing is associated with doesn’t have the same experiences, but is believed to have these experiences and to know what he or she is talking about when that may or may not be the case. 

Woodmansee's Author Effect

Woodmansee—On the Author Effect I

Martha Woodmansee in her essay titled “On the Author Effect: Recovering Collectivity” the idea of the author is discussed as a concept that is not solitary, even though popular culture has defined it as such, but is in fact collaborative. Woodmanse asserts that the concept of the author does not reflect the modern writing process. As mentioned in the introduction, writing today is collaborative and was described as such by the research of Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede in their study regarding the writing processes and practices of composition students. Regardless, the singular notion of the author has become prevalent and a common teaching tool in a writing classroom where many of us teach writing as a solitary activity and where students sometimes only use sources as a way to back up arguments instead of creating a conversation with those source materials.

Woodmansee determined through her research on the author effect that in the past authors were seen as just one of the craftsman of many in the construction of a book. At the same time, the writer was considered a specialized craftsman because he or she had composed that material. For example, in at 1815 essay that Woodmansee quotes from, it was determined that a author held some mysterious genius, which I would argue is still a common myth held by some of my students today. Just like there is one answer for a work of literature, which is an idea that comes out of New Criticism, an author is simply a born writer. One did not learn to write well, instead that person, that author, was born with that special ability as if a higher being had designed that person in such way. I always have to show how incorrect this myth is to my students and promote the idea that good writing comes from practice, good reading, and even more practice in writing.

To better illustrate how writing is and always has been collaborative, Woodmansee turns to the work of Samuel Johnson, a prolific writer himself, but one who often wrote for others. Woodmansee remarks how Johnson’s collaboration with others served as a motivating factor for him writing. It seems as if that Johnson would not have been as prolific of a writer if not for the fact he wrote sermons and other genres for others to purchase from him. After the writing had been purchased, Johnson considered himself as having no rights to that writing. But even with his behind the scenes collaboration, Johnson also did help to create the myth of the singular author into existence.

This discussion reminded me of an article I had read in The Chronicle about two years ago or so where an individual had written an article about how he worked for a company that sold ready made essays to students. (You can read the article here: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/ ) Johnson’s practices seem somewhat familiar to what that individual had discussed in his expose of the essay selling business in the sense each gave up his authorial rights for profit and considered it an exchange of goods. Furthermore, the internet has changed our conception of the author through things like hypertext and twitter where a number of individuals are creating and responding to a piece of writing. Thus, writing remains and will continue to remain a heavily collaborative activity.

Questions:

The idea of Johnson’s collaboration with others as a “motivating” factor of his writing was intriguing to me. So my question is that do you think that students are more motivated if they work on a piece of writing collaboratively as opposed to alone? Even as someone who would rather work alone, I do believe there is some truth in collaboration creates more motivation.

Bolter (qtd in Woodmansee on page 25) calls the notion of copyright in a digital age “absurd.” Do you agree or disagree and why? For instance, electronic communication blurs the boundaries of what is mine or yours through things like hyptertext and comments to articles and videos.

To continue with this question, I also notice that students are sometimes more interested in comments to articles than they are interested in the articles themselves, which is an interesting activity, I think, and perhaps the comments help students feel more engaged with the article since they can see similar opinions (or different ones) being shared. Do you think that the commenting function on many websites helps “motivate” students to critique, write, and share ideas?

Going back to the idea of motivation and collaboration, do you feel that incorporating more collaborative writing curb instances of plagiarism? Or have you done a lot of collaborative assignments in the classroom and noticed how it has curbed plagiarism, whether intentional or unintentional?